Declaration of Dependence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are evolved servile, that they are endowed by their Government with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Abortion, Gay Marriage and the pursuit of Hope and Change. That to secure these rights, Mainstream Media are instituted among Men, deriving their just opinions from the indoctrination of the Academy, That whenever any Form of People becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Government to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new People, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its Speech in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Sinecures and Self Regard.

Home, sweet home

Google now has Street View for London. Apparently some poor sod drove around most London streets and snapped 360 degree views every 20 seconds. Here's a typical slice of London life. You can tell it's not Salt Lake City.

The reindeer antlers are a nice touch. I hope you'll all visit London soon. If you're interested in London, this snappy video (not mine) samples the complexity of my native city. It may not be wholesome, but it is addictive, especially to photographers like me.

Pillow talk can be complicated

Ace!
Update: at Ace a comment asks:

What happens when the teleprompter calls at 3am and needs a cuddle?

There's no business like no business

US politics these days is a scene from Hieronymus Bosch. The bill of attainder against AIG employees which tears up contract law is the worst legislation I've ever seen. Ok Roe v. Wade is even worse morally and intellectually, but this just makes me gape. Let the names of the 85 Republican congressmen who voted for this go down in US history as bywords for political cowardice. As well as the sheer evil intent of this legislation, it plumbs new depths in stupidity. The story leads the FT:

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.
There were fears that the public backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m (€122m) in bonuses, which followed the US insurer’s taxpayer-funded rescue, would have devastating consequences for the country’s largest banks.

“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.”

The banker added: “This is like Russia 15 years ago. It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt . . . This is the most profoundly anti-American thing I’ve ever seen.”

That's Barney Frank on the high stool, bottom right, dreaming of a windfall tax on Big Oil.

The US is now unpredictable. Change the government and contracts can be voided, alliances disrespected, terrorists rewarded, sheriffs who protect US borders investigated, our descendants suddenly loaded with a mountain of debt. Right now America's best hope is China and China's best hope is to start selling US debt to crash the price ASAP as a piercing alarm to the US government to change course now, right now. I'd buy Credit Default Swaps on the USA except that it's hard to imagine a counter-party with non-correlated risk. That's why gold is strong.

Morning rant #7

This guy is running your country. The people who manage his teleprompter are his back-up. The economy's imploding, Russia's re-arming, Iran's going nuclear and, and, and...and you pick a President to make you feel good. Hell's bells! Read and weep:

By the way I don't see this story in the US msm so far and don't see the clip on YouTube. Altogether now...."What if this had been Bush?" Or Palin? Oh la la! If this had been Palin there wouldn't be bandwith in all the optic fibre in America to cope with the sneers and condescension.

To boldly split

Mick cites Mitt:

the Obama administration was wrong to initially defend the bonuses

I hiccupped over this split infinitive and began a post titled "Mitt Romney, you are dead to me", but on reflection it's ok; "was wrong initially to defend" is unclear and "was wrong to defend the bonuses intitially" sounds weaker. Therefore Romney remains my preferred conservative for 2012. Phew!

I don't care about grammar. English doesn't care about grammar. Grammar is a means to an end. The end is clarity with euphony. If infinitive splitting serves that end, well fine, but it rarely does. "To boldly go" well emulates the plonking bathos of Star Trek and works in context, but "boldly to go" is better both for euphony and emphasis. English is not a prescriptive language and Shakespeare is the least prescriptive of writers, yet he split an infinitive but once and that was a special case.

I do not prohibit split infinitives; I prohibit dull language. We use language to think; dull language, dull thought. Keep your tools sharp. I am not that purist of whom the revered Raymond Chandler wrote:

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split..

''Shard reaches for the sky amid office sector gloom"

FT:

Construction of western Europe's tallest building will begin in London today amid the gloomiest market for commercial building in decades, thanks to backing from a group of Qatari banks.

Designed by Renzo Piano, the Shard of Glass will tower 1,016ft above London Bridge station and stand nearly three times as high as St Paul's Cathedral.

In this flat schematic The Eiffel Tower looks magnificent alongside The Shard and The Chrysler Building, but look at this video (again) for an impression of how the Shard will enhance London. Qudos to the Qataris for appreciating that a trough in the market is a less risky time to build.

The Russia Tower project, the competition for tallest building in 'Europe', is frozen, likely cancelled. London will certainly recover thanks to its diverse advantages, such as distance from capricious dictators, but Moscow is a bigger risk. 

A deeper risk than the economic cycle is 'What is the point of commercial office space anyway?' Virtual office space is cheaper, more malleable, more interconnected, cuts out commuting ('Man was born free but everywhere is in trains'), and is in some ways more 'present', meaning communication is simpler and more configurable.  The argument about energy revolves around questions like 'Is it green?', 'Should we live sparser lives?', ' Will oil run out?', and so on, but the issue may simply become moot by adopting the virtual office as the norm.  Half our journeys would vanish, both local commutes and long-distance business travel. If a flat-screen isn't 'present' enough, well just beam me up in 3d and I'll join you round a virtual conference table in a virtual corporate HQ.

'Turning cod into PhDs'

Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker) has written a long, entertaining, instructive piece on the Icelandic Saga, Boomandbust. This gives me several opportunities:

1. I'll try out Scribd - it seems to work ok below.

Iceland

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

2. It prompts me to publish "What I Learnt In Iceland", doggerel dashed off on my first visit to Iceland in 2007:

Rhubarb's a stem and not a fruit,
Prunes and muesli make you toot,
But snorchestras will drown out wind.
Allegedly (I'm not convinced)
Box jellyfish aren't jellyfish and
Greenland is further east than Iceland.
A Minister of Elvish Matters
Defines the routes of roads and detours.
Dottirs and ssons of Irish slaves
Kill foxes, whales, whatever moves,
And there's a certain charm in grimness,
Tax evasion, drunken primness,
Strapping horses, strapping women.
Real men who smell of fish and semen.
Volcanic science,
Car-mangling giants,
Fire and ice,
I think it's nice.

3. I can link my gallery from Iceland. These days my edits aim for a less sharpened, more 'liquid' image surface than here.

4. I can promote the gallery service called Phanfare. It's free, handles full-screen slideshows, accepts music uploads and is ergonomic. It's hard to find this combo.

5. I can promote the great value trek I took with Sherpa Expeditions:Sherpa

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Morning rant #6, peak oil = peak technology

The deep reason that oil production has not peaked is that technology has not peaked. It's not just a matter of cutting edge techniques in applied geoscience or directional drilling or high pressure, high temperature operations. With experience costs can be cut dramatically with slimmer engineering and less 'gold-plating'. For example deepwater expro has much further to go, not least in the Western Hemisphere in both the US and non-US Gulf of Mexico and the Santos Basin off Brazil. As well as the giant Tupi and Jupiter finds, today comes news of another "very huge" result on an Exxon operated well. Add the untapped potential on the Alaskan North Slope, offshore California and offshore Florida. Then add the gargantuan shale oil deposits onshore the USA and Canada. Then add middle distillate synthesis of natural gas to very pure heating oil and kero. Natural gas is already available in giga-gargantuan quantities. It's a logistics play more than an an expro play.

Peak oil is a completely bogus argument for wrecking landscapes with windfarms and destroying the Amazon forest for corn-for-ethanol production. Of course by the time Exxon hits first production in Brazil, its many billions of annual corporation tax may be paid to the Swiss government rather than the USSA government. Does anybody on Planet Obama get it that oil exploration and production in the USA is stimulative? So is building nuclear power stations. When we're borrowing from our children for present spending, shouldn't the spending be on capital projects to benefit the economy which they will inherit, rather than bullshit boondoggles for teachers' unions, Acorn and the other jackal packs that make up the Democratic interest groups gorging on America for as long as China will lend more money?

Trivia: Where was the first discovery of a giant oil field? 'Giant' means > 500 million barrels. Answer - offshore NW Peru. How come? Because The geographic setting for much of the world's oil is the palaeo-deltas of giant river systems like the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Tigris/Euphrates and the Amazon. "The Proto-Amazon delta flowed westwards into the Pacific, before the Andean uplift in the late Tertiary." Stick that in your pipe and fractionate it.

Sanford and more

"What you're doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don't have and send it to different states, we'll create jobs," he said. "If that's the case, why isn't Zimbabwe a rich place?"

I'm impressed. Romney/Sanford or Romney/Palin in 2012 works for me. If Sanford has the knack of reducing complex clusterfucks to simple truths, then let's not wait for 2012. Let Romney, Palin, Sanford act together right now like a loyal opposition, loyal to the USA, the City on the Hill, rather than loyal to Harvard Law School. Talk about a toxic asset; Harvard Law School, take a bow. You're in the spotlight riding a unicycle and the wind's blowing.

Afterthought: I'd also be happy with Palin top of the ticket. She is a natural leader. I think of her tonight with the news that her eldest daughter, a new mother, is breaking up with the father. In our multi-choice answer culture marriage is an act of will anyway. It's a little harder with multitudes sneering and gossiping.

Here's an averagely repulsive piece of sociology:

"Within her base, I think this will just increase sympathy and support," said Gary Alan Fine, a Northwestern University professor of sociology who studies political reputations. "It will make her seem more like a person who has to confront the challenges of life, and this is one of them. If you're a fundamentalist or a devout Christian, you don't believe you're living in a world without sin, you don't believe people don't make mistakes."
And for those who love to hate Palin, this is another arrow in their quiver.

"It just adds a kind of frisson of joy, a little pleasure," Fine posited. "It confirms the kind of Beverly Hillbillies aspect, the lower-middle-class qualities that people saw in Sarah Palin."

The professor knows what he's talking about in the latter case, but when he characterizes Palin's support as fundamentalist and devout Christian, he's projecting his own fantasy onto the world outside the academy.

Action, reaction, punchline

Action: